stars

NASA Discovers Sweater Weather Star

We knew about Star Latte CFBDSIR 1458 10b—a star so cold you could lick it—but NASA has now discovered an even colder star. So cold that you could wear a sweater if you were there. https://gizmodo.com/this-star-is-so-cold-that-you-can-actually-drink-it-5785275 The star is a brown dwarf, one of the the six classified as cool Y’s. It’s name is WISE…

Space & Spaceflight Jesus Diaz Aug 24

The lights in the universe are going out. Now astronomers think they know why.

The universe just isn’t what it used to be. Billions of years ago, when the universe was still in its infancy, the casual observer would have seen stars forming all around him, and at a pretty rapid clip. In recent years, however (i.e. the last few billion), the rate of star formation has slowed to…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Aug 23

The collision that created Earth’s Moon is reenacted around an alien star

NLTT 43806 is a white dwarf, the dying remnants of a star like our own. But there’s a problem. Its composition doesn’t make any sense…unless there was a cataclysm just like the one Earth experienced four billion years ago. Located about fifty light-years away, NLTT 43806 is unlike any other white dwarf we’ve seen before.…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Aug 14

Astronomers learn that two white dwarfs do not make a supernova

Although every supernova has some things in common — a big boom, for example — there are plenty of different types. And different reasons why a star might go nova. Even when focusing on one particular type of supernova, there’s sometimes disagreement about what might be causing it. For example, it was thought that supernovae…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Aug 12

Most water in the universe comes from superheated geysers erupting on young stars

A proto-star has been observed shooting water from its poles out into space. It may continue to do so for over a thousand years. Scientists think that this process may account for much of the free-floating water in the universe. A new star is slowly condensing over in the Perseus constellation. L1448-MM is surrounded by…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jul 6

An American Flag Full of Tweets

No offense to Betsy Ross, but this is an American flag made for the 21st Century. It’s a digital weave created from the avatars of Twitter users who tweet about Independence Day using a July 4th hashtag. Old Glory can be found at the Code for America website and was created with the help of…

Tech News Kelly Jul 4

I Had Forgotten How Beautiful the Night Sky Is

For the first time in my life, I want to live in Wyoming. This photograph, taken by Robert Arn over the course a single night, captured the glittering and glowing night sky in 360 degrees. Why can’t the sky always look like this? Over to the left of the picture, you can see a lunar…

Tech News Casey Chan Jun 23

Ultra-Bright Burst of Light Marks the Death Throes of a Star Being Eaten Alive

Astronomers have solved the mystery of a gargantuan cosmic explosion first spotted in March: A black hole did it, by killing and eating a star the size of our sun. A couple months ago, we told you about an unusually bright and long-lasting blast of energy emanating from the center of a galaxy 3.8 billion…

Space & Spaceflight Rebecca Boyle - PopSci Jun 18

Vampire Stars Stay Young by Feeding Off Their Neighbors

A cannibalistic star sounds like something fit for a sci-fi flick, but it’s a real thing. And it’s called a “blue straggler.” Blue stragglers (also known as “vampire stars”) are nothing new. Then again, is anything “new” in a 13-billion-year-old universe? Astronomers have seen these vampires in various star clusters throughout the universe, but the…

Tech News Max Behrman Jun 10

When superfluid physics creates the illusion of alien civilizations

Sometimes astronomy goes nuts in many different ways at once. On rotating neutron stars (pictured), it gets particularly wild, because superfluids are involved. The result? Stars covered in highly regular triangular patterns — as if somebody built them that way. Superfluids are liquids that have zero viscosity. Like superconductors, most superfluids need to be cooled…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jun 10

Strange new class of ultra-bright supernova discovered

A new class of supernova has been discovered, with six examples of it seen so far. Powered by a mysterious source, they’re brighter and longer-lived than the novae we know now. The Palomar Transient Factory uses the telescopes at the Palomar Observatory to scan the skies, looking for flashes of light. The flashes could be…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jun 9

The Earth revolves around the night sky in reversed time-lapse video

How we see the universe is defined by where we’re standing, and that can create some fundamental misconceptions about the cosmos. Case in point: this time-lapse video that reminds us it isn’t the stars that are moving…it’s the Earth itself. This particular clip was created from a larger time-lapse video that we featured last week.…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Jun 5

On a star forming in the constellation of Orion, it’s raining crystals

One of the awesome things about the universe is that it’s big enough for crazy-wonderful things to happen. Luckily, astronomy lets us see them. For example, there’s a star where it’s raining olivine crystals right now. Far away, in the constellation of Orion, a young proto-star called HOPS-68, is forming. Stars form by attracting mass…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell May 27

The Bright Lights of Border Control Scare the Astronomers’ Stars Away

There’s a reason you can’t see stars in the city—lights. Lights everywhere! They drown the sky’s bounty out, and apparently it’s even affecting Arizona astronomers, who are unfortunately situated right by the border…and the border patrol’s spotlights. Border-jumpers and smugglers targeted by border patrol’s bright helicopter lights are actually ruining the chances of the state’s…

Space & Spaceflight Kat Hannaford May 20

This Bread Loaf-Sized Satellite Might Find the Next Earth

Looking for Earth-like planets way out in the cosmos is usually the task of huge—and hugely expensive—satellites. But a new “nanosatellite,” only 30 centimeters long, is taking on the job, at a fraction of the price. The ExoPlanetSat’s camera has a pretty tough sounding mission: In order to make the proper measurements for a given…

Space & Spaceflight Sam Biddle May 16

The stars are falling over Greece in amazing time-lapse video

The stars are always moving through the night sky, but the effect is so slow that it’s hard to really grasp it. That’s why there’s this video, which throws in various Greek landmarks just to be even more ridiculously beautiful. Star trails are some of the most visually arresting artifacts of time-lapse photography, as the…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins May 4

Amateur Astrophotographer Creates Largest True-Color Night Sky Panorama

One day, Nick Risinger, a 28-year-old marketing director from Seattle, felt like he needed a change. So he quit his job, packed up six professional astronomical cameras, and hiked 60,000 miles through western United States and South Africa, taking 37,000 color pictures of the night sky. The result? This 5000-megapixel, interactive, zoomable map showing our…

Space & Spaceflight Davey Alba May 3

Why the biggest explosions come from the smallest galaxies

Scientists have noticed that the bigger explosions out come from the smaller galaxies. If star size were purely random, bigger galaxies with more stars would have larger explosions. Find out why small galaxies produce massive booms. Plenty of people have heard of white dwarf stars (stars that burn out and never nova) and brown dwarfs…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Apr 23

Ancient Antikythera Mechanism Continues to Amaze with Recent Discovery

The Antikythera mechanism, one of the world’s oldest known gadgets, has coughed up another secret. In addition to tracking time and upcoming Olympic games, the mechanism was also great at tracking the motion of the Sun across the sky. Because the orbit of the Earth around the Sun is an elipse, not a circle, our…

Tech News Jack Loftus Apr 2

The stars dance with a spiral galaxy 80 million light-years away

Everything in this image is so far away that it defies our comprehension. And yet we’re also looking at two vastly different scales here, as stars from well within our own galaxy share space with a far distant spiral galaxy. This image from the Hubble Telescope is a simple but powerful reminder of how cosmic…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Mar 22

NASA Discovers Sweater Weather Star

The lights in the universe are going out. Now astronomers think they know why.

The collision that created Earth’s Moon is reenacted around an alien star

Astronomers learn that two white dwarfs do not make a supernova

Most water in the universe comes from superheated geysers erupting on young stars

An American Flag Full of Tweets

I Had Forgotten How Beautiful the Night Sky Is

Ultra-Bright Burst of Light Marks the Death Throes of a Star Being Eaten Alive

Vampire Stars Stay Young by Feeding Off Their Neighbors

When superfluid physics creates the illusion of alien civilizations

Strange new class of ultra-bright supernova discovered

The Earth revolves around the night sky in reversed time-lapse video

On a star forming in the constellation of Orion, it’s raining crystals

The Bright Lights of Border Control Scare the Astronomers’ Stars Away

This Bread Loaf-Sized Satellite Might Find the Next Earth

The stars are falling over Greece in amazing time-lapse video

Amateur Astrophotographer Creates Largest True-Color Night Sky Panorama

Why the biggest explosions come from the smallest galaxies

Ancient Antikythera Mechanism Continues to Amaze with Recent Discovery

The stars dance with a spiral galaxy 80 million light-years away

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